November’s events at the Center include a poetry workshop with Negus Adeyemi, who won Weeksville’s annual poetry slam, and the monthly meeting of the THNK Book Club. They will also host a discussion on choosing a school for your child in Central Brooklyn and a presentation about how Sudanese Americans living in New York will be affected by Trump’s travel ban, part of a series of conversations taking place throughout the city.

Weeksville was founded as an African-American community in 1838 to support the struggle for African-American suffrage in New York state, following the end of slavery in the state, which took effect in 1827 (although in 1830 there were still 30 people in New York waiting for emancipation).

In the midst of this process, New York changed its legal qualifications for voting. In 1826, the state constitutional convention removed the existing property requirements for white men, granting them universal suffrage, but for African-Americans, only men who owned property worth $250 or more had the right to vote.

That motivated James Weeks, a stevedore, and several other African-American investors, to purchase tracts of land in Brooklyn’s Ninth Ward. They divided their purchases into smaller plots that would meet the $250 property threshold for voting rights and advertised for other black families to make their homes in the neighborhood, which soon became known as Weeksville.

Weeksville quickly became economically self-sufficient, politically important, and a vital space of refuge. It was home to the Bethel Tabernacle AME Church and the Berean Missionary Baptist Church, Colored School No. 2, the Zion Home for the Colored Aged and the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum.

Houses that were part of the original community stand alongside the Weeksville Heritage Center. Go to Bklyner to learn more about Weeksville’s history, and about artifacts that have been found at the site, including striking images.

As the White House urged Congress to withhold $600 million in nutrition assistance to Puerto Rico, officials responded angrily that this is only the latest in a series of President Trump’s attempts to stop the flow of federal aid to the island, El Nuevo Día reports. Political analyst Domingo Emanuelli found the Trump government's actions “barbaric,” and urged Puerto Rican Republicans to reconsider their allegiance. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said: “I shouted against Trump’s abuses from the start while others were chummy with him. Trump is not the plantation owner and we are not his slaves.” Link to original story →

The Indigenous Peoples March being held in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, a day ahead of the Women's March, will bring together groups from Puerto Rico to South America and Central America, reports Remezcla, to focus attention on issues from voter suppression to human trafficking to police brutality to what is called an “environmental holocaust” by activists. “I think it’s a collective cry for help because we’re in a time of crisis that we have not seen in a very long time,” says Nathalie Farfan, an Ecuadorean Indigenous woman and event organizer. Link to original story →

After vowing to create a more inclusive school system in North Carolina, the Durham Board of Education introduced a new department of second language services to serve newly-arrived immigrants who don’t speak English as a first language, Qué Pasa Noticias reports. One of the main goals of the initiative will be to coordinate a translation and interpretation system to help families participate in their children’s education. “As our Latinx population keeps growing we keep opening our schools’ doors to those arriving from all over the world,” said Superintendent Pascal Mubenga. Link to original story →

With Sen. Kamala Harris expected to announce her decision on a presidential run, The American Bazaar asks members of the Indian-American community about the potential candidacy of the California native. While some celebrated the possibility of Harris, who is of Jamaican-Indian descent, running amid the current political atmosphere, others say the country is "still not ready for a female president and certainly not a non-white." Link to original story →